# Social connection and mental health in girls: A prospective longitudinal study across adolescence

> **NIH NIH R56** · UNIVERSITY OF OREGON · 2021 · $728,340

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
 Internalizing problems are common, harmful, and increasing amongst adolescent girls -- creating a
public health imperative to identify behavioral and biological mechanisms and/or indicators of risk. Social
connection, exclusion, and loneliness are well known to affect emergence and recurrence of internalizing
symptoms and disorders in adolescent girls, and recent efforts have begun to focus on the specific role of
close friendships in these processes. While the quality of close friendships often buffers against risks for
mental disorders, in adolescent girls some supportive features of close friendships may also increase risk for
depression, anxiety, and self-harm. One important new context in which to consider these processes is the use
of digital technology, especially social media, as adolescents extensively use these methods to connect with
friends and peers. It is therefore essential to understand how the dynamics of daily online and offline
experiences of social connection, social exclusion, and loneliness impact adolescent girls’ mental health. In
addition, it is also clear that pubertal development strongly impacts risk trajectories in adolescent girls, likely via
concomitant neural and social changes. Neural responses to social exclusion are widely understood to differ in
adolescents with depression, anxiety, and self-harm; yet we know very little about how positive aspects of
social connection might buffer these individual differences. The Transitions in Adolescent Girls (TAG) study,
launched in 2015 (R01 MH107418), was designed to conduct a comprehensive multilevel investigation of the
connections between biological and social changes during early-to-mid adolescence, in order to reveal the
ways in which these interconnected changes relate to risk for the emergence of a range of mental health
problems associated with pubertal development in girls. We enrolled a community sample of N=174 girls (ages
10.0-13.0 years) into a longitudinal study, with 3 waves of data collected every 18 months, including 2
laboratory visits at each wave. The first phase of the TAG study was designed to address the question of
whether puberty influences mental health via its impact on neural, self, and social cognitive development). We
propose to collect additional waves of data at two more 18-month intervals, bringing the cohort to 16-19 years
of age. Critically, we will incorporate an expanded multilevel emphasis on social connection, including both
established questionnaires and neuroimaging tasks as well as innovative new methods that leverage mid-to-
late adolescents’ use of smartphones. This has the added benefit of extending the project to examine the
impact of early-to-mid adolescent biological and psychosocial changes on mid-to-late adolescent social
connection and mental health -- a key phase of life for both of these processes. We hypothesize that social
connection during mid-to-late adolescence is not only predictive of concurrent and nea...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10329144
- **Project number:** 2R56MH107418-06A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
- **Principal Investigator:** Jennifer Hope Pfeifer
- **Activity code:** R56 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $728,340
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2015-08-01 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10329144

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10329144, Social connection and mental health in girls: A prospective longitudinal study across adolescence (2R56MH107418-06A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10329144. Licensed CC0.

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